READ THIS AND LAUGH, HARD TO BELIEVE

3:00 a.m. 24.Nov.1999 PST
When the Gregorian odometer finally flips to zeros in California, if
all goes well, state officials will have already endured the dawn of
Y2K enough times to be prepared for anything.

State emergency officials have developed a 'Follow the Sun' program
designed to keep tabs on any disastrous effects as Y2K as it crosses
from east to west across the globe.

Read ongoing Y2K coverage
More Infostructure in Wired News

"It's sort of an early warning system for California so we can
understand what's going on in other parts of the world and if that
will have an impact in the state," said state emergency services
spokesman Eric Lamoureux.

Members of the state's Governor's Office of Emergency Services and the
Department of Information Technology developed the strategy as a way
to track any technology problems that might occur across the globe and
assess the likelihood of similar problems occurring in California.

Selected staff in nine state foreign trade offices under the
Department of Trade and Commerce, also including Taipei, Mexico City,
London, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, and South Korea, will be on the
lookout to track any disruptive events as they happen.

Why all the fuss? California has a US$1.1 trillion economy, the eighth
largest in the world -- twenty percent of which is dependent on
foreign trade, investments, and exports, Marando said. "That s why
were taking a global approach to this."

Technology leaders Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Hitachi -- members
of the California Year 2000 Business Council along with many other
companies with a stake in the stability of California's technology
infrastructure -- have donated staff and office space around the globe
to serve as information hubs during the state's Y2K watch.

The alliance of so many diverse companies and public agencies is a
rare first that perhaps only an event like Y2K could bring on, said
Oscar Gonzales, spokesman for the governor's Y2K project.

"This program is unprecedented, because typically, these companies are
competitors," he said. "Traditionally, the state of California has
neglected to capitalize on the wisdom of the technology sector."

While there's good reason to keep a watch on how Y2K effects
California's commerce, the technology employed in the "Follow the Sun"
program is decidedly low tech. Staffers around the world will use
"conventional methods" to report on the effects of Y2K, such as by
tuning in to local radio, television, and just plain looking out the
window, Marando said.

Foreign trade offices will communicate with the California
headquarters via email, telephone, or, in the event of
telecommunications problems, through satellite phones.

The program will spring into action when the first reports of Y2K come
in from Auckland, New Zealand, at midnight on 31 December -- 20 hours
before California's own New Year's celebration.

As the New Year begins its journey across the planet's many time
zones, staffers at a state operations center in California will be
receiving and analyzing reports from across the world to see how they
could apply to their state.

"We'll try to understand the severity of the incident. If its a
telecommunications problem, we'll try to understand what the system is
for that particular city, and see if there is any similarity to
California," said Lamoureux. "If there is, we'll try to notify the
agencies that have jurisdiction over it and try to determine a
contingency plan."

Take, for example, a mass power failure in New Delhi, Lamoureux said.
"It may not have an impact in California because their system is
different than ours, but we will try to understand that system so we
can then decide what we need to do to prepare ourselves."

While Lamoureux said he doesn't expect Y2K to result in any severe
problems for the state, he acknowledged that it's far better to be
safe than sorry.

"This is so incredibly unique because you have a situation that you
can prepare for, but we dont know what the magnitude is," he said.
"If nothing else, it will give people an opportunity to learn about
how to prepare for things of this nature."

Answers

Yeah, Right!! Its so stupid that I can't even laugh about it. If
communications go down in NZ they will have it "fixed" in California
20 hours later. They won't even FIND it until after theirown system
goes down. And fix in 20 hours? Find "it" in 20 hours? I don't
thiiiiink sooooo!!

Ok, it won't bail them out, but it might give them time and INCENTIVE
for an orderly shutdown. Remember, there are some managers out there
who still think this is all hype. So some nagging underling got them
to grudgingly buy off on this watch-the-world network.

When stuff starts to go blooey in NZ, some denialist managers will get
an instant wakeup call. That gives them a few hours to call in
whoever will come to work, it gives them time to warn 911 that they
are in more trouble than they thought, time to do a quick
backup and powerdown the mainframes. Yeah, it's not a solution, it's
not gonna save the Titanic, it just wakes up passengers and tells them
to put on life jackets.

What's their alternative? Guzzle champagne and then be called in at
1:00 am drunk, to try to fix it? For some agencies, just getting this
much buy in was probably a major victory.

This may just show to what extent they are willing to do everything,
no matter how idiotic, that they can think of to fix. I really don't
get it. When we take every precaution, we're prudent. When they add
another layer of precaution, they are idiots. How about if we applaud
every good thing, no matter how small.

I'm the technology coordinator here at the school, and here's my take.

Electricity-- Local supplier has been working since 1995. We had a big
snowstorm in Oct 1997, (brought down a lot of trees that still had
leaves, juice was out for up to a week in spots) and they found the
weak spots in their contingency plans. They have been announcing
readiness for about a year now, and I believe them.

As for the school itself...

We are a private school, not a multi-building district, and everything
is done on PC's.

We got a fix from the company that wrote our financial package about a
year ago. We always try and do Dec paychecks before Christmas
vacation, so the mission critical items are taken care of. :-)

Our network is Novell, and we have installed their patch. If it
doesn't work, who cares, we can set the date back, because nothing we
do depends on dates. All our PC's get their dates from the network
when they log in. If not, we set them back, old dates won't effect
word processing, net surfing, or student work.

Our heat is electric, with individual thermostats. If the power is
on, we are warm. (On the other hand, you wouldn't believe how many
students would rather wear their coats than leave them in their
lockers. Now if we could get them to adopt that attitude about
bringing their books and homework to class.) :-)

Our transcript programs always allow us to set or change the year. No
problem

Our scheduling (as usual)is already done for next semester.

Our bell and phone and intercom system are all tied together and new.
They failed (from old age) late last spring. We were without them
for the last couple of weeks. The principal used a compressed air
powered horn in place of the bell. It worked then, could work again.
Our security system has never worked. Sunday, we played basketball
for an hour before the alarm sounded, saying it had sensed an
intrusion in the gym. I didn't turn it off when I came in, because I
didn't think it could be turned on. My point is that if the alarm
system fails, we already know how to handle it.

If you knew the incredible amount of flexibility we have to use to get
through an average day around here, you would feel (like I do) that we
can cope with about anything.

In reality, barring societal or infrastructure collapse, it will be
business as usual around here.

(Remember that we are in Nebraska, and are planning on taking Jan 4
off so everybody can watch the bowl game.) [g]

I think you're on the right track Ray, just because it's not midnight
yet in the US doesn't mean that Europe, et al, couldn't possibly drag
us under in the suction when it goes down.

New Zealand will affect Australia and Asia, meanwhile when Australia
and Asia have troubles, the dominoes start falling toward Europe and
the Americas. Even without a worst case 9 or 10 scenario, North
America could feel the accumulated weight of the rest of the
computerized world. Well before 12am on 01012000.

Walt ---- Thanks for the detailed update on the status of your
school. Its very good to have positive imput on this forum, seeing
that it has a "large" audience of "doomers" and unfortunatly I have to
classify myself within that audience. However no one is hoping it is
"just a bump in the road" more than I do. Your students are fortunate
to be attending a school that is aware of the Y2K problem.

Robert: GMT( or Zulu or Coordinated) is the same worldwide. To get
local time you have to add if you are in the eastern longitudes and
subtract when in the western longitudes. The trick as I understand
it is some organizations run on GMT and others on local. New Zealand
if my memory serves me correctly is either GMT plus 8 or 9 hours.
That means if an organization in NZ has its computers based on local
time they could see problems 31 Dec 99 @ 1500Z.That puts it early New
Years Eve for us to watch. Confused? Me too.

If you will be one of those wondering how it's going? A good rule of
thumb will be; Watch the crowds celebrating rollover. When you see
the SAME person walking around, BUT in different clothing...get the
hell outa Dodge!